Once the environmental goals of a sustainable building project have been established, the assessment process for selecting the appropriate building products begins. An architect or product specifier must evaluate a number of products and determine what company or industry product information is credible and accurate and which is not. Determining this typically involves three basic steps for the architect or product specifier: investigating various suitable products, evaluating the information and selecting the product that best fits the project's goals and objectives. In the investigative stage, information such as product data sheets, Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), ASTM testing data and any type of environmental claims, are needed to understand fully the product's capabilities and limitations. The next step is to evaluate the information and determine if any information gaps exist. While evaluating such information can be an easy task if the products are similar, it can be a challenge if the material is different but has the same function. In these cases, more information will be needed, which can prove time consuming and frustrating. More supportive data - such as life cycle assessment and life cycle costing (both of which are discussed in this article) - can prove extremely valuable in the product evaluation stage. Finally, after considering the overall objective of the project and using what product data is available and makes sense, the architect or product specifier selects the appropriate materials.
In order to encourage the use of natural stone by the sustainable building industry, the stone industry needs to support research in two areas of great interest to the green building industry: life cycle assessment and life cycle costs.